New Video Series: Getting Started with vSphere with Operations Management (VSOM)

If you are an experienced vSphere admin then this post may not be for you. However, if you are new or just getting started on your journey to virtualization and vSphere with Operations Management (VSOM) then please keep reading…

I was once asked: “Explain how a brand new admin who wanted to install vSphere with Operations Management (VSOM) for the first time would go about doing that?”. While my initial thought was “Ah, that’s easy!”, in trying to answer this question it occurred to me that it’s actually quite involved, especially when you are new. You would need to do some research to understand the components, in the course of this research you would come across many new terms and acronyms and several different installation guides. Bottom line, a lot of time would be spent trying to figure out what the pieces are and how they fit together, and this is all before you install the first component.

This got me thinking about the challenges new IT professionals face and how it can be difficult having to sift through the vast amount of data trying to get answers to even the simple questions.

It’s in this spirit that we have created a new video series entitled “Getting Started – vSphere with Operations Management”. These videos are aimed specifically at helping new IT professionals get started with VSOM. The series starts by introducing you to the principals of virtualization and then guide you through the process of installing and configuring each VSOM component. The aim is to to help you spend less time researching and more time doing. These videos are basic, the goal was simple – to provide a series of introductory videos targeted at people who are new to vSphere in order to help get them through the initial learning curve.

There are currently 28 videos available on VMware TV’s YouTube channel. I’ve also provided a summary of the videos below. Please check them out and let us know what you think. We plan to use the feedback we get from these videos in order to create additional videos that will also target at the new IT professional just getting started.

This video introduces you to the benefits of virtualization and how it can help reduce cost, improve availability and simplify operations for your IT infrastructure. It introduces you to VMware’s high performance, enterprise-class hypervisor architecture and provides information to help you get started with deploying VMware vSphere.

This video shows how to deploy vSphere with Operations Management (VSOM) in a simple lab environment that mimics the environment used to create the training videos. Watch this video to learn how to create a small lab that you can use to evaluate and train on vSphere with Operations Management.

This video provides an overview of the vSphere Host Direct Console User Interface (DCUI). The DCUI is a menu-based interface that is accessed from the host console and used to configure ESXi running on vSphere hosts.

This video shows how to download the vSphere client and install it on a Windows desktop so you can use it to connect to and manage your vSphere hosts. Note that the vSphere client can be used to manage a single vSphere hosts as well as together with vCenter server in order to provide centralized management of many vSphere hosts.

This video shows how to use the vSphere client to connect to a vSphere host and deploy the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). The VCSA is a preconfigured Linux-based virtual machine optimized for running vCenter Server and associated services.

This video shows how to use the vSphere web client to enable and configure High Availability (HA) and Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS). HA protects against machines down time by automating recovery in the event of a host failure. DRS ensures performance by balancing virtual machine workloads across hosts a cluster.

This video provides an example of how to replicate and recover a virtual machine using vSphere Replication.

About the Author

Kyle Gleed is a Group Manager within VMware’s Integrated Systems Business Unit (ISBU) where he leads a team focused on the adoption and deployment of the solutions and capabilities of the Software-Defined Data Center. Follow Kyle on twitter @Kyle_Gleed